But Microsoft’s role in upholding U.S. imperialism goes deeper than its role in Zionist genocide. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, has used his billions of dollars from Microsoft profits to create one of the world’s most powerful NGOs: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (now the Gates Foundation). Around the world, from health to education to agriculture, the Gates Foundation has functioned as a crucial entity pushing a neoliberal capitalist agenda of private property over humanity.

During the early COVID-19 pandemic, targets of neocolonialism in the Global South called for a People’s Vaccine free from pharmaceutical industry patents. But the Gates Foundation, whose budget is larger than that of the World Health Organization, said no.

Instead, it followed the same strategy it had used when weaponizing earlier outbreaks of Ebola and HIV — aiding poor countries to help them buy drugs, while stridently defending the “rights” of monopolistic drug corporations. Public outcry forced the foundation to reverse course, while still insisting that it only supported temporarily waiving property rights and did not support the notion of healthcare as a universal human right.

A similar dynamic holds true in the Gates Foundation’s agricultural work. It praises the “Green Revolution” in India and is the major funder of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. It’s not hard to see why — the Green Revolution model is essentially a turbocharged emphasis on capitalist land relations and particularly on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

This emphasis results in greater dependency on U.S. and other international agribusinesses, pushing developing countries further into peonage. It’s no surprise, then, that the Gates Foundation has given its “Goalkeepers” award to Narendra Modi, the conservative Prime Minister of India who happily accepts a status as U.S. proxy.

Finally, the Gates Foundation — paid for by Microsoft profits — also champions colonial relations inside the U.S. It’s a vocal supporter of charter schools, which typically use corporate money to impose draconian discipline on poor, Black, student communities, bypassing teachers’ unions and community activists in the process. Microsoft money thus helps close the door on any possibility of education as a path towards justice, preferring instead to train colonized students to become conditioned to alienation.

This is the face of Microsoft — upholding genocide in Palestine, “green” colonialism around the world and white supremacy at home. Solidarity with all oppressed peoples, and down with Microsoft!